culture

What does the word “gift” mean to you? In English, it most often refers to a present or something given voluntarily. In German, it has a completely different meaning: “poison.” If a box marked “gift” is placed in front of an English-speaker, it’s safe to assume that he or she would interact with it very differently than a German-speaker would.

In the same way, simple words like “public,” “private,” and “hybrid” in cloud computing can mean very different things to different audiences. But unlike our “gift” example above (which would normally have some language or cultural context), it’s much more difficult for cloud computing audiences to decipher meaning when terms like “public cloud,” “private cloud,” and “hybrid cloud” are used.

We, as an industry, need to focus on semantics.

In this two-part series, we’ll look at three different definitions of “public” and “private” to set the stage for a broader discussion about “hybrid.”

“Public” v. “Private”

Definition 1—Location: On-premises v. Off-premises

For some audiences (and the enterprise market), whether an infrastructure is public or private is largely a question of location. Does a business own and maintain the data centers, servers, and networking gear it uses for its IT needs, or does the business use gear that’s owned and maintained by another party?

This definition of “public v. private” makes sense for an audience that happens to own and operate its own data centers. If a business has exclusive physical access to and ownership of its gear, the business considers that gear “private.” If another provider handles the physical access and ownership of the gear, the business considers that gear “public.”

We can extend this definition a step further to understand what this audience would consider to be a “private cloud.” Using this definition of “private,” a private cloud is an environment with an abstracted “cloud” management layer (a la OpenStack or CloudStack or VMWare) that runs in a company’s own data center. In contrast, this audience would consider a “public cloud” to be a similar environment that’s owned and maintained by another provider.

Enterprises are often more likely to use this definition because they’re often the only ones that can afford to build and run their own data centers. They use “public” and “private” to distinguish between their own facilities or outside facilities. This definition does not make sense for businesses that don’t have their own data center facilities.

Definition 2—Population: Single-tenant v. Multi-tenant

Businesses that don’t own their own data center facilities would not use Definition 1 to distinguish “public” and “private” infrastructure. If the infrastructure they use is wholly owned and physically maintained by another provider, these businesses are most interested in whether hardware resources are shared with any other customers: Do any other customers have data on or access to a given server’s hardware? If so, the infrastructure is public. If not, the infrastructure is private.

Using this definition, public and private infrastructure could be served from the same third-party-owned data center, and the infrastructure could even be in the same server rack. “Public” infrastructure just happens to provide multiple users with resources and access to a single hardware node. Note: Even though the hardware node is shared, each user can only access his or her own data and allotted resources.

On the flip side, if a user has exclusive access to a hardware node, a business using Definition 2 would consider the node to be private.

Using this definition of “public” and “private,” multiple users share resources at the server level in a “public cloud” environment—and only one user has access to resources at the server level in a “private cloud” environment. Depending on the environment configuration, a “private cloud” user may or may not have full control over the individual servers he or she is using.

This definition echoes back to Definition 1, but it is more granular. Businesses using Definition 2 believe that infrastructure is public or private based on single-tenancy or multi-tenancy at the hardware level, whereas businesses using Definition 1 consider infrastructure to be public or private based on whether the data center itself is single-tenant or multi-tenant.

Have we blown your minds yet? Stay tuned for Part II, where we’ll tackle bare metal servers, virtual servers, and control. We’ll also show you how clear hybrid environments really are, and we’ll figure out where the heck we go from here now that we’ve figured it all out.

Security of your assets on our cloud platform is very important to the SoftLayer team. Last week, our Security Operations Center – which provides real time monitoring of suspicious activity (including being part of multiple security pre-disclosure lists) – alerted our engineering team to a potential vulnerability (advisory CVE-2015-8555 / XSA-165) in the Xen Hypervisor that if left un-remediated could allow a malicious user to access data from another VSI guest sharing the same hardware node and hypervisor instance.

Upon learning of this vulnerability, SoftLayer issued a notification including a per-data center schedule for applying critical maintenance to remediate the vulnerability. Our schedule was performed over multiple days and on a POD-by-POD basis with individual VM instances being offline for minutes while they rebooted. The updates were completed successfully in all data centers in advance of the public announcement of this vulnerability.

While deployment techniques such as clustering and failover across data centers and PODs allows continuous operations during a planned or unplanned event, you should be aware that SoftLayer is committed to working aggressively to further reduce the impact of events on your deployment and operations teams.

We value your business and will continue to take actions that insure your environment is secure and efficient to operate. If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to reach out to SoftLayer support or your direct SoftLayer contacts.

The week in review. All the IBM Cloud and SoftLayer headlines in one place.

Grocery store chain comes to SoftLayer.
We are excited to have Giant Eagle moving to our infrastructure. So why are they moving away from building their data centers? Jeremy Gill, Giant Eagle’s senior director of technology infrastructure, said, “The firm's focus has shifted to infrastructure-as-a-service for its future computing needs as an answer to the geographic spread of its users. It chose IBM over other providers because it offered both virtual servers and bare-metal servers on which Giant Eagle could run some of its legacy applications.”

Giant Eagle plans to transition their secondary data center used for disaster recovery to SoftLayer over the next 12 months. Gill also noted that moving to the cloud will help to develop their current disaster recovery system. In doing so, they’ll be “adding additional resiliency.” In an article by InformationWeek said, “The disaster recovery system, instead of being asleep in storage, will be represented by a virtual machine, running at idle, but ready to receive data and be scaled out.” Gill further noted, “The goal is to get the recovery time objective down from one or several hours to 15 minutes or less (possibly even instant recovery).”

IBM Cloud leaves competitors in the dust.
The results of a recent independent study, Amazon.com and Microsoft are a step behind IBM’s cloud offering.

The independent research firm’s goal was to “measure the performance and relative cost of the cloud industry's biggest players. The objective of the study was two-fold: one, determine which of the cloud kings offered the most operations per second. Second, compare the relative cost for each operation performed. Not only did IBM's SoftLayer bare metal platform win the day -- it turns out it wasn't even close.”

So why is it a big deal? If you look at it based solely on performance, the study found IBM is far and above its competitors. The survey said, “For each dollar spent on IBM's SoftLayer bare metal cloud platform, its customers enjoy 4.63 billion operations.” It also highlighted, “That's a lot of bang for the buck, particularly compared to other cloud providers. Amazon.com's AWS customers get about a third fewer operations for each dollar spent, and Microsoft about a tenth.”

Happy holidays! We can’t believe the year is already winding down. Under the Infrastructure has been so caught up in sharing our SLayer stories with you that the days have just flown by.

Speaking of flying, we’re excited to introduce you to one of our world voyagers, Jerry Gutierrez. He’s a global high performance computing (HPC) sales leader (say that one five times fast!) based in our Dallas headquarters—but you’d be hard-pressed to find him there these days. From South America to Asia, his busy schedule has him in meetings all over the map—and enjoying every minute of it.

Last month, Gutierrez celebrated his three-year mark with us. You ready to meet him?

SOFTLAYER: How would you explain your job to a layperson?

JERRY GUTIERREZ: I help sales teams globally identify and close HPC or accelerated computing-related sales opportunities. I also work with our product and marketing teams by way of customer feedback, marketing initiatives, and go-to market strategies around our HPC and accelerated computing products.

SL: Tell us about a day in the life of doing your job.

GUTIERREZ: I’ll give you an example. I was in Brazil this past week, in Sao Paulo and in Rio de Janeiro. I met with the sales teams there and gave them my insight into our GPU products from NVIDIA, along with some roadmap information. We then showed a really nice NVIDIA GRID demo for the customers and ran a small workshop around GPU-accelerated virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment. We aim to run these sessions with a small audience of technical influencers and we keep them interactive and hands-on. We traveled to one of the customer’s offices and showed a live demo to a full house—running their software on a virtual GPU-enabled workstation that was running from SoftLayer’s Sao Paulo data center.

After that, we took a flight to Rio, where we had additional meetings with the internal sales group and a workshop-style presentation with customers. I have a technical background, so I talked to them about the technology, showed the demo, and answered questions. I think this strategy is very effective and much more powerful than just doing a PowerPoint presentation and showing slides with the bits and bytes of the products we offer.

Following that, I met with a large local university and a couple of startups to discuss our Catalyst program. Because I’ve been with SoftLayer for quite a while as a former senior sales engineer and now in my current role, I’m comfortable speaking to everyone from large enterprise C-level execs to the fast moving startup groups.

Wherever I go, I’m excited to talk about SoftLayer. I enjoy that part of the job.

SL: People always wonder, “How does that apply to me?” when you’re showing them something new. You demonstrate how the platform can work for them.

GUTIERREZ: Absolutely. We find it very powerful. Customers get engaged. They sit up in their chairs. They ask questions. That’s very powerful to me. We almost take the sales part right out of it and we’re talking on a technical level: what are your challenges, what have you done so far, what’s worked, what hasn’t worked? In Brazil, the goal was to show, on a technical level, the capabilities of SoftLayer with NVIDIA technology running applications that they use in-house but deployed in the SoftLayer cloud—all with the same experience that they’re used to, with the added benefits of better security and scalability.

SL: So your position isn’t as much exclusively sales as it is possibilities.

GUTIERREZ: Right. Part of what I do is business development around accelerated computing (including GPUs) because I have a technical background, and I’m very passionate about it. (I actually manage the relationship overall between SoftLayer and NVIDIA). It’s very exciting see what our customers have created using our platform, especially with GPU technology.

SL: Your position is very global. What have you learned in dealing with customers around the world?

GUTIERREZ: Understanding the different cultures and what it means to do business in different cultures was a huge plus for me. For instance, in Japan, it’s very formal during business hours. But afterwards, you go to happy hour and people loosen up a little bit. I had several calls with our Japan team before I visited, and I felt there were some awkward silences. I didn’t know what the pauses meant because I wasn’t seeing their faces. I was wondering if I said something wrong or off. When I went to visit, I got to know their personalities. They want to ingest what you just said, so there’s a pause before they answer you. You can’t get a feel for personalities or body language over the phone, and video chat isn’t the same.

SL: If someone was interested in doing what you’re doing, what advice would you have?

GUTIERREZ: First, I would advise them to get a mentor. At SoftLayer, it’s extremely helpful for us to both have a mentor (and I would say a plus would be an IBMer that’s been with the company a while) and be a mentor—it’s actually highly encouraged at IBM, because that relationship can provide so many insights and help us along our career paths. Secondly, do what you love. If you love to be in front of customers and enjoy working with people and talking about technology like I do, pursue it. In my role, you’d want to have a technical background and a sales background as well. That’s really the mix for this role, since it’s very customer-facing—you’re doing presentations, thinking on the fly, and you need to be able to answer technical questions. Lastly, I would encourage them to pick a product, process, etc., to be the lead on or to champion and work to drive it and improve it. I found it very refreshing when I came to SoftLayer that it was not only open to this but that the company encouraged it—even though it was well out of my original job description. IBM is the same. Score!

SL: What’s the best places you’ve traveled and why?

GUTIERREZ: Tokyo and Rio. Tokyo is a very unique city. Tokyo is very clean, people are thoughtful and friendly. I’m a technical person and they have all the coolest technology. That’s the geek side of me talking! The food is fantastic, too. Rio is a totally different experience: beautiful beaches, beautiful weather, beautiful sights. The music, the food, it’s just phenomenal. And of course, the people. The people are extremely friendly.

SL: Those are pretty good favorites, we’d say.

Oh, and hey, if you’ve got any room in your suitcase, we wouldn’t mind hitching a ride around the world with you.

During the NewCo Boulder festival, web development agency Quick Left gave a talk about diversity and inclusion in the workplace. The panelists shared stories of their experiences around diversity—good and bad—and gave advice on what can be done to make workplaces more inclusive. It was one of the best talks I heard all year.

After much discussion, both philosophical and tactical, an audience member expressed concern about counter-discrimination. Would the time come when he would be overlooked for a job because he was not a diversity candidate?

This is not the first time this has been brought up in diversity discussions, and he was expressing what many (perhaps too many) straight white males think when diversity is discussed. To the credit of Gerry Valentine, one of the panelists, he did not chastise the audience member, and instead commended him for his bravery. The man who asked the question gave voice to a common concern that is often thought, but rarely brought up. The panelists at NewCo Boulder handled it very well, pointing out that no one wants a job just based on their gender, skin color, sexual preference, or anything other than their ability to execute on the job. And, collectively, we want to create a world where everyone has the opportunity to compete for jobs on equal ground.

I was truly moved by the entire session, but found myself upset that even at the close of 2015 we are still answering questions about counter-discrimination. When Gerry commended the question for its bravery, I first wondered if he was being glib. But knowing Gerry, I was certain he was serious about his comment. Upon further reflection, I realized what's interesting about this "pale and male" pushback is that it comes from a place of fear. A fear of discrimination is at the root of the question when someone asks, "As a white male, am I going to get passed over for a job because this company wants to hire for diversity?"

Following Gerry's example, it's OK to acknowledge that fear. It’s OK to point out that white men don’t want to live in a world where they are discriminated against, even subtly. While that is a valid fear, for the straight white male candidate, it is only a fear of a potential future. If they can imagine potential discrimination, can they acknowledge that the reality of our world today: anyone who isn’t a straight white male does experience this as real fear. Imagine walking into a job interview having to first overcome the things about you that you cannot control (gender, skin color, sexual orientation, physical handicap, economic background, country of origin, etc.) just to get to a level playing field with the other candidates. If you don't want this for yourself, you certainly wouldn't want it for anyone else.

In startups, we love to talk about unfair advantage, but when it comes to hiring, the only unfair advantages should be skills and experience. What the movement for inclusion and diversity is about—and what we should be striving for—is a world where we all compete equally. If it is a brave thing to express your fear publicly, it is braver still to acknowledge the reality of the situation and work to rectify it.

One of the things I love about the startup community is that once we identify a problem, we move forward to solve it in as many ways possible. The path to inclusion in the workplace doesn't have to be a pendulum that oscillates between two extremes—discrimination and counter-discrimination—before settling down in the middle. Pendulums are a relic of the industrial era. In the digital era, we can choose our target, set our standards, and move forward as a community to achieve them. As you build your startup, build inclusion in your workplace from day one.

The week in review. All the IBM Cloud and SoftLayer headlines in one place.

IBM grows Direct Link services.
IBM is speeding up hybrid cloud adoption by expanding Direct Link services with the help of Verizon and Equinix. An article from eWeek highlights the key points and the aspects of the new services. The new services include colocation capabilities, which will allow companies to “house their own infrastructure in a secure cabinet within an IBM Cloud data center while connecting directly into the IBM Cloud network from 13 global data center locations.”

Jack Beech, VP of business development at SoftLayer, says, "With help from providers such as Verizon, Equinix and Digital Realty, we're giving clients more options for connecting to our cloud platform. Users can connect directly into our Infrastructure as a Service from their global data centers or offices using Direct Link, benefiting from a faster, more reliable and more secure connection than is typical through the public Internet."

Read more about how the new services will increase the life of existing IT investments here.

So how did they build the game? The Cloud Data Services Developer Advocacy team used “the data and analytics power of Apache® Spark™. We set out to create a pattern-recognition engine that could browse a large collection of interactions to determine what would most likely be the winning move.”

With only two months to complete the application, they reached out to the IBM Design team for assistance in “how design thinking could produce very exciting results.”

Want to know what went into the architecture, player experience design, implementation with Node.js, and more? Get the details here.

What’s cooking, Watson?
Watson can do more than win Jeopardy. Turn to IBM Watson to help you plan the menu for your next meal.

Enter Chef Watson. The cognitive cooking app will assist you in creating new recipes in just a couple of clicks.

We are committed to providing SoftLayer customers with the most visibility into and control over their invoice payments. So, to make it even easier for customers to make payments in their preferred non-USD currency, SoftLayer is now accepting more currencies from customers who pay their invoices via PayPal.

By using PayPal, customers can pay their SoftLayer invoices in their preferred currency and only pay the foreign currency exchange rate charged through PayPal, which is often less than direct debit/credit card charges. Customers will see the USD invoice amount and the foreign exchange rate prior to completing the transaction. (Customers who do not have a PayPal account will need to create one.* For help with this, view our PayPal Foreign Currency Acceptance Training Guide.)

SoftLayer now accepts the following 26 currencies for payment via PayPal:

Argentine Peso (ARS)

Australian Dollar (AUD)

Brazilian Real (BRL)

Canadian Dollar (CAD)

Czech Koruna (CZK)

Danish Krone (DKK)

European Union Euro (EUR)

Hong Kong Dollar (HKD)

Hungarian Forint (HUF)

Israeli Shekel (ILS)

Japanese Yen (JPY)

Malaysian Ringgit (MYR)

Mexican Peso (MXN)

New Zealand Dollar (NZD)

Norwegian Krone (NOK)

Philippine Peso (PHP)

Polish Zloty (PLN)

Russian Ruble (RUB)

Singapore Dollar (SGD)

Swedish Krona (SEK)

Swiss Franc (CHE)

Taiwan New Dollar (TWD)

Thai Baht (THB)

Turkish Lira (TRY)

U.K. Pounds Sterling (GBP)

U.S. Dollar (USD)

And for our customers who like to “set it and forget it,” we’ve got auto-pay functionality through PayPal in the works. Stay tuned for updates.

Have questions or need help setting up your SoftLayer account to pay with PayPal? We’ve got answers. Contact a member of our sales team.

-Sarah

*A credit card is required in the SoftLayer account for initial orders for new customers. The payment method can be changed to PayPal prior to the due date of the first invoice.

Remember that one time we put three chatty cloud guys in a tiny room without windows (where no one can hear you scream) to talk cloud way back in September? Yeah, we do, too. Those were the days. In the second episode of our official, esteemed podcast—Cloud, Interrupted, "Cloud security and Daylight Saving Time drive us insane." for those of you following along at home—we have reasons! Reasons why this is only our second episode! Reasons that make sense! Because we owe it to you, our most loyal listeners. Join Kevin Hazard, director of digital content, Phil Jackson, lead technology evangelist, and Teddy Vandenberg, manager of network provisioning, as they wreak havoc interrupting the world of cloud. Again.

If you TL;DR-ed that intro, here’s the meat and potatoes of our latest podcast. Dig in:

[00:00:01] WE NOW HAVE THE BLEEP BLOOPS.

[00:01:21] The real reason our second podcast is fashionably late.

[00:03:16] It’s not that we’re insane when it comes to Internet security; it’s that no one understands us.

[00:06:14] Stay out of our bowels, Kevin!

[00:07:19] When you move to the cloud, you’re making all the same security mistakes you always make—multiplied by 10.

[00:10:30] What are cloud providers obligated to do in terms of security for their customers?

The week in review. All the IBM Cloud and SoftLayer headlines in one place.

And the winner is
We are super speedy, but don’t take our word for it. Let us point you to the results of the sponsored cloud benchmark test courtesy of VoltDB. The YCSB benchmark, executed by ACME Benchmarks, was used to compare SoftLayer, an IBM Company, with AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

So what was the key takeaway? According to John Hugg, “Comparing the SoftLayer bare metal performance and price/performance to the virtualized platforms is interesting. Perhaps it’s not surprising that bare metal does well, but the difference for this benchmark was significant: 50% better absolute performance and 40% more operations per dollar. ”

Hugg also explained the reasoning behind choosing the four aforementioned platforms. In doing so, he noted, “SoftLayer is the odd one here, but it’s really interesting because it offers bare metal hosting on an hourly basis. It’s clear from the results it has performance and price/performance advantages.”

IBM to deliver the ultimate fan experience
Last week, IBM launched the Sports and Entertainment Global Consortium, “which was created to design, build and deliver the ultimate fan experience.” They also presented the new Sports, Entertainment and Fan Experience consulting practice, which will be “led by Jim Rushton, who joins IBM after serving as Chief Revenue Officer of the Miami Dolphins and Sun Life Stadium.”

What will the Consortium do? The press release stated that “The consortium brings together IBM's world leading information technology and recognized leaders in such areas as, construction and design, network infrastructure, wireless, and telecommunications.”

Rushton emphasized that “Sports enterprises and venues need to look at ways to get to know their loyal fans as individuals, and convert that fan loyalty into new revenue streams—not just on game days but 365 days a year.” The practice Rushton will head up plans to “deploy more than 100 global specialists in experience design, mobility, marketing and data analytics supported by a global network of 20 digital design studios.”

Wonder how this will convert into the ultimate fan experience? On a personal note, does that mean people will get cell service while at a game? Looking for that one area you get service means less time watching the game, and that is never a good thing. 😃

We know, we know. We were only back in Texas for a week, but Under the Infrastructure gets restless being at home too long. This week, we went way down south to catch up with someone that does almost as much globetrotting as we do!

Meet Brendan Yell, our Catalyst Startup Program manager for Australia and New Zealand. He’s been a SLayer for a little over a year, and after you get to know him, you’re probably going to want to steal his job.

But he’ll tell you about it himself.

SOFTLAYER: Describe your role at SoftLayer as if the President of the United States asked what you do for work.

BRENDAN YELL: My role is to work with startups and help them succeed. A big part of this is giving them great cloud servers, but it is a lot more than that. I mentor over 50 startups, and a great deal of the time I am not refining their business model or changing their product. Mostly, I connect them to people who can help them out. This can be in the form of investors, customers, and strategic partners.

SL: The Catalyst crew always looks like it’s having the best time. What makes the Catalyst team different?

YELL: I won’t lie; we do have a pretty good time traveling around the world attending cool parties and events. However, this can be pretty exhausting as well. What makes the Catalyst team different is that even though we are scattered around the globe, we are all great friends that are happy to help each other. Recently I had a startup travel to New York, and our person there, Jen Litorja, met with them and made some invaluable introductions for them. This helps the startup and makes us look great to the startup. Jen had no real benefit from spending her time with this startup other than helping them, and helping me.

SL: What’s the most gratifying thing about your job?

YELL: What I love is when a quick two-minute email to someone in my network can literally change the fortunes of a struggling young startup. Having done startups myself (like most in the Catalyst team), I understand how hard it is to give up a lucrative job to go start a company. I also understand that money is not the only motivator for this; people want to create something, be their own boss, and make a difference.

SL: What’s the funniest, silliest, or strangest thing that’s happened to you on the job?

YELL: I recently had an idea pitched to me in the queue of the supermarket. But the pitch did not come from someone in the queue; it was from the cashier. How cool is that?

SL: What’s your favorite place in the whole world and why?

YELL: While I love San Francisco and New York, when you travel up to 40 weeks of the year, it has to be home. We are lucky to live on a lake about 90 mins north of Sydney. It’s so quiet and peaceful there, unlike the hustle of the startup world. Without it, I would be burned out.